| | | | |  | | By Nick Taylor-Vaisey, Zi-Ann Lum and Andy Blatchford | Send tips | Subscribe here | Follow Politico Canada Welcome to Ottawa Playbook. I'm your host, Nick Taylor-Vaisey with Andy Blatchford and Zi-Ann Lum. Today marks the start of the homestretch in an anticlimactic Ontario provincial campaign. Plus, Friday's an enormously important waypoint for federal Tories jockeying for the party's leadership. Also, birds. Did someone forward you this Playbook? Click here to sign up for your own subscription to this free newsletter.
|  | DRIVING THE DAY | | 19 DAYS TILL SUMMER — As MPs return from their ridings, they settle in for the stretch run to their summer break from the spotlight of the Commons. DOFO's BIG WEEK — This has got to be close to ANDREA HORWATH and STEVEN DEL DUCA's worst nightmare. For totally different reasons. Four years ago, Horwath was so close but so far. As KATHLEEN WYNNE's Liberals fell to defeat almost everywhere, Horwath's NDP climbed to Official Opposition at Queen's Park. The perennial bronze medalists had finally broken the streak. That was Horwath's third kick at the can. Her fourth campaign looks a lot like old times when victory was out of reach. The NDP is in a dogfight for second place with Del Duca's Liberals. Whatever the result, Horwath's party is exceedingly unlikely to give her a fifth shot. Which brings us to the Liberal leader's uphill climb to win his own seat. DOUG FORD has been making a lot of noise in Vaughan–Woodbridge, where MICHAEL TIBOLLO trounced Del Duca in 2018. The PC leader scored a remarkable coup last week when Toronto Star columnist MARTIN REGG COHN penned a fluffy column after shadowing Ford at the door in that very riding. Playbook's prognosticating pal, PHILIPPE J. FOURNIER of 338Canada, forecasts a second term for Tibollo. That'd leave Del Duca trying to lead his party, which could form the Official Opposition, from outside the Pink Palace where all the real debating happens. — Ford's romp: Fournier's latest projection has the PCs winning anywhere between 59 and 100 seats — and an average of 83 seats across his simulations. That's a virtually guaranteed majority when the magic number is 63. We'll have Fournier's final projections on Wednesday. Voting Day is Thursday. The race for second is in the homestretch. DRAMZ ON THE GROUND — Keep an eye on the land of greenhouses and windmills in the province's southwestern corner for some election night fireworks. While your Playbook host spent the week birding blissfully at Point Pelee (scroll down for feather-brained spotteds), politicking in the riding of Chatham–Kent–Leamington was anything but chill. — Oddball dynamics: Imagine a place where a three-term incumbent who was booted from the governing party is running for re-election alongside a fiery band of populist right-wing freedom evangelists. Toss in a Liberal Party that dropped one candidate only to lose the replacement ballot-filler a matter of days later. Mix in a governing party that is gaining popularity in the region at the expense of desperate New Democrats, and you've got a recipe for wild returns at the ballot box. RICK NICHOLLS is the incumbent. He won the riding handily in 2018 before DOUG FORD kicked him out of the Progressive Conservative caucus for refusing to get vaccinated. STEPHEN TAYLOR mapped the 2018 poll-by-poll result. Now, Nicholls is running with DEREK SLOAN's Ontario Party — and planting lawn signs ( here's one) that look eerily similar to both the federal Conservatives' last template (here) and this year's PC design (here). Fair play or nefarious obfuscation? You be the judge. Leamington municipal councilor TREVOR JONES, by the way, is the PC candidate. AUDREY FESTERYGA was the Liberal candidate forced to step down amid allegations her campaign submitted fraudulent nomination signatures. She had taken over from ALEC MAZUREK, whose teenage social media behavior did him in. BROCK MCGREGOR, a municipal councilor in Chatham, is running for the NDP. — How it all adds up: Fournier forecasts a safe PC win in the riding on his popular 338Canada election projector. Fournier pegs Jones's haul at 48 percent, with McGregor in second at 23 and the Liberals third at 15. Nicholls nets only 6 points. But is it that simple? Festeryga dropped out last week in the middle of advance voting. Her vote won't drop to zero. When Green MP MIKE MORRICE won federally in Kitchener Centre last September, the Liberals managed 16 percent of the vote even though incumbent RAJ SAINI had long since left the race under a cloud of harassment allegations. But where will most Festeryga votes end up? The NDP has increased its share of the vote in Chatham–Kent–Leamington in every election since 1999 — from a paltry 5.35 percent to 35.71 in 2018. Aside from the longshot Greens, McGregor is the only progressive candidate still in the running. Last fall's federal vote was a shot over the bow of Ford's PCs. People's Party candidate LIZ VALLEE nabbed 14 percent of the vote at the expense of every other candidate. But Nicholls has the incumbency advantage. How many of his PC voters will follow him? — The favorite: Still Jones. But this is a riding with no shortage of 'F--k Trudeau' flags flapping in the breeze. It'll all come down to who shows up.
| | CONSERVATIVE CORNER | | DEADLINE DAY — Just as all the GR firms in Toronto and Ottawa get their staff back from a grueling provincial campaign, the federal Tory leadership race starts to get reallllly interesting. June 3 marks perhaps the most important date of the contest except for its ultimate crescendo Sept. 10 at the Shaw Centre in the nation's capital. Every candidate has until 11:59 p.m. that day to sign up as many members as possible. Nobody who takes out a party membership after Friday's deadline gets a leadership ballot. That's why you might've noticed YouTube star and darling of aggrieved men everywhere JORDAN PETERSON shilling for PIERRE POILIEVRE. Poilievre wants to cash in on Peterson's 5 million subs, and he reminded the nearly 150,000 viewers — and counting — that he can only run to be PM if they make him Tory leader. Poilievre is all over the map this week, literally: Winnipeg tonight and Saskatoon tomorrow. Former leader ANDREW SCHEER , Poilievre's occasional hype man, is headed to Yellowknife today to drum up support. — Method to the madness: Every riding is worth up to 100 points in the leadership vote. In the 2020 race, Northwest Territories had just 179 voters, good enough for 251st in the country on number of Tories in good standing. That's fertile ground for any candidate who can sign up even a few dozen voting members. By contrast, Foothills in Alberta had the most members in 2020 at 2,079. A total of 44 ridings managed 1,000 members two years ago. Membership rolls could be much higher this time around. The Toronto Star's STEPHANIE LEVITZ recently cited unnamed party officials who pegged the number at nearly 400,000. The 2020 race spiked membership to a record-setting 269,469. LESLYN LEWIS senses momentum on the east coast, where she's visiting ridings in Newfoundland this week that had similarly modest CPC voter bases in 2020. Lewis will be in Charlottetown for the Friday evening membership deadline. — Then what? Playbook's next quest is to delve into the nitty-gritty of voting. Signing up an entire room of new Conservative members is only useful to a candidate if those keeners in the room actually go through the process of filling out and sending in their ballots. One campaign operative recently summed up the summer's task in one word: "Persuasion." — In related reading: From the Hill Times: Ed Fast says he has 'no regrets' speaking out against Poilievre's 'monetary quackery' on Bank of Canada.
| | PAPER TRAIL | | HAWKEYE CONCERNS — The government is proposing to bump down the classification of peregrine falcons from being a species of "special concern" down to one being "not at risk." The notice, posted in the Canada Gazette Friday, also included a proposal to delist the common nighthawk and olive-sided flycatcher from "threatened" species to "special concern" status. It's a proposed change of classification Ottawa acknowledges could have a disproportionate impact on Indigenous peoples "because they only apply on federal lands, of which Indigenous reserves are part." Lack of information seems to be a concern. One unnamed Indigenous community in Quebec expressed during consultations that they don't support the delisting of peregrine falcon without a better understanding of the evidence. A Quebec Indigenous community's council expressed separate concerns about delisting the common nighthawk and olive-sided flycatcher as a "threatened" species. The Gazette notice stated the council "would not support the downlisting… without a clearer picture of how recovery actions have supported the change in status."
| | TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS | | The Globe and Mail reports: "Ottawa is set to reveal this week whether it will force all owners of banned assault weapons to give up those firearms, after an earlier, unpassed bill that would have made the surrender optional drew intense criticism from gun-control advocates." The Canadian Press says to watch for the bill today: "the Liberal government's latest — and likely boldest — suite of proposed actions to control access to firearms in Canada." 9 a.m. Cannabis lobbyists are meeting in and around Parliament for "Grass on the Hill," a two-day event that includes a leadership conference and lobby day. 9 a.m. Heritage Minister PABLO RODRIGUEZ will be at LeBreton Flats Park to reveal programming for Canada Day celebrations. 11 a.m. Transport Minister OMAR ALGHABRA will be at the House transport committee. Intergovernmental Affairs Minister DOMINIC LEBLANC is due up in the second half. 12 p.m. The House human resources committee will hear from Minister of Families, Children and Social Development KARINA GOULD on standards for passport applications. 2 p.m. Public Safety Minister MARCO MENDICINO is currently scheduled to be at the Senate national security and defense committee on Bill S-7. More on that below. Canada is serving as host for the Ministerial on Climate Action (MoCA6) in Stockholm, Sweden. Environment Minister STEVEN GUILBEAULT is expected to push countries to embrace carbon pricing.
| | AROUND THE HILL | | SHOW ME YOUR PHONE — Public Safety Minister MARCO MENDICINO will be under the committee spotlight this afternoon to take questions from senators on contentious legislation stoking fears about privacy protections at the border. Bill S-7, introduced in the Senate earlier this spring, is designed to establish the circumstances in which a border officer may search the contents of a traveler's personal digital device, like a smartphone, tablet or laptop. Sen. MARC GOLD, the Liberal government's representative in the Red Chamber, introduced S-7 on behalf of Mendicino — who will now have to defend it. The public safety minister will spend one hour in the hot seat, starting at 2 p.m. ET. — The pushback: Critics warn the legislation to update the Customs Act and the Preclearance Act would allow an officer to search the contents of an iPhone if they had just "reasonable general concern." The worry is the change would open the door for authorities to easily probe our personal lives via our smartphones. "With this legislation, the government has created a wholly novel test for a search of an international traveler's cell phone or computer, a threshold without precedent in Canadian law," Sen. PAULA SIMONS said during a second-reading debate on S-7. "Our border rules were originally created to allow customs agents to look for 'stuff' — illicit goods, things like smuggled drugs or smuggled cigarettes and smuggled exotic animals … But when we treat the private secrets carried on our digital devices as though they were goods, we weaponize the Customs Act in fresh and unintended ways." BRENDA MCPHAIL of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association argued last week that S-7's threshold misses the mark. To protect travelers, she said the minimum threshold should be "reasonable grounds to suspect." — The government's position: The Trudeau government has said it recognizes personal devices can contain private information and it has insisted it would protect the privacy of Canadians. The searches are "conducted sparingly and selectively," says the government, which argues they are necessary to look for "prohibited and harmful goods, such as child pornography and obscenity." The government proposed the legislation after a 2020 court ruling in Alberta ruled the examination of content on personal digital devices by border officers was unconstitutional. BORROWING-COST BULGE — The Bank of Canada is widely expected to deliver another extra-large, half-percentage-point rate hike Wednesday in the latest step by Governor TIFF MACKLEM to bring inflation back under control. Canada's annual inflation rate accelerated in April to 6.8 percent — and a fresh three-decade high. — Last time: Last month, the bank raised its benchmark rate by 50 basis points. For Macklem, the pressure is on. And if runaway prices and spreading cost-of-living fears weren't enough, the governor may be wondering about his own job security. Recall that PIERRE POILIEVRE, the performatively anti-establishment frontrunner for the federal Tory leadership, dropped that debate-stage bombshell that, if he becomes prime minister, he'll give the governor the boot. — What's next: We'll have to wait a little longer before we hear Macklem's response to Poilievre's threat. The rate decision Wednesday will only come via press release at 10 a.m. ET — there will be no press conference. — In related reading: How central bankers lost their grip on inflation.
| | MEDIA ROOM | | — One year after Kamloops: TANYA TALAGA and MEL TAIT share the story of a family of residential-school survivors who had to find closure for the spirits of those who didn't make it home. — AARON WHERRY offers a progress report on the Liberal-NDP deal. — The Hub Roundtable devotes much airtime to a MARK CARNEY Twitter thread and his new role at Canada 2020. "This is the most overt signal on the part of Mark Carney that he is looking for a place to kind of tend to his political aspirations while he awaits … possible changes at the top of the Liberal party," SEAN SPEER said. "One can't help but think this week that these seemingly innocuous tweets set up a kind of Liberal grudge match between Mark Carney and CHRYSTIA FREELAND to lead the party … I think we'll look back on this week as a major political moment," he added. — Top of POLITICO this morning: Time is ticking to replace the Pentagon's 1970s-era Doomsday planes. — How secure is abortion access in Canada? In Chatelaine, MICHELLE CYCA reports on the state of play. — THE BIG STORY pod talks to JACOB SILVERMAN about crypto thefts. — POLITICO's Westminster Insider's new host AIBHE REA explores the quirks and the controversies of the pack of journalists who inhabit Westminster, known universally as "the lobby." Listen here. — Here are the world's top stories, as seen by cartoonists.
| | PROZONE | | For POLITICO Pro subscribers, our Friday policy newsletter by ZI-ANN LUM and ANDY BLATCHFORD is jam-packed: The week ahead: Eyes on the Senate. In other headlines for Pros: — How FEMA helps white and rich Americans escape floods.
— The G-7 wants to dump natural gas … but not yet.
— Truck engine industry sues over California's clean truck rule.
— U.S. leans toward sending rocket systems to Ukraine.
— WHO calls for global audit of smallpox, monkeypox jabs and fair access.
| | ASK US ANYTHING | | TELL US EVERYTHING — What are you hearing that you need Playbook to know? Send it all our way.
| | Talk of the town | | TRIVIA NIGHT, IN REAL LIFE — Playbook Trivia is going non-virtual: Thursday, June 9 at the METROPOLITAIN in Ottawa! Gather your team, then send us an RSVP to reserve a table. We have just a couple of tables left.
| | PLAYBOOKERS | | Birthdays: HBD to Alberta Premier JASON KENNEY, born in Oakville on this day in 1968. Also celebrating today: Newfoundland & Labrador Industry Minister ANDREW PARSONS, Alberta MLA SARAH HOFFMAN, former Edmonton mayor DON IVESON, former MP, MALCOLM ALLEN. Spotted: JANE PHILPOTT and family at Ottawa Race Weekend. At the Canadian Association of Journalists' conference in Montreal: DAVE SEGLINS, MATTHEW PEARSON, KELSIE KILWANA, KIM BOLAN, LYSE DOUCET, BRANDI MORIN, ROBYN DOOLITTLE, CHEN WANG, FATIMA SYED, FRANCINE COMPTON, DYLAN ROBERTSON, JUSTIN LING and JULIAN SHER. At advance polls: MARCO MENDICINO, JAMIE ELLERTON, CHRYSTIA FREELAND and PENNY COLLENETTE. At the Great Glebe Garage Sale: JUSTIN TANG, ARIEL TROSTER, STEPHEN HENDRIE, NICK SCHIAVO, IAN AUSTEN and local politicians and candidates on every block. At the GG Performing Arts Awards: DON NEWMAN in conversation with former PM BRIAN MULRONEY … And at intermission, Proof's GREG MACEACHERN. … Afterwards, GG MARY SIMON held court with a long line of well-wishers. At Pelee Island: A tree full of TURKEY VULTURES, a GREAT EGRET in flight, a YELLOW WARBLER chasing a RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD from its perch, a mischievous COMMON YELLOWTHROAT trailing your host down a savannah trail, dozens of TREE and BARN SWALLOWS content to flit around at will, and enough BALTIMORE ORIOLES to fill several moribund big league ball clubs. Movers and shakers: Former NDP MP LIBBY DAVIES was honored in Vancouver with a YWCA Women of Distinction Award. The prime minister has announced updates to the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency — appointing MATTHEW CASSAR and FOLUKE LAOSEBIKAN to five-year terms. CRAIG FORCESE will serve as vice-chair until his term ends in 2024. JOHN DAVIES was reappointed executive director for a three-year term. Media mentions: Huge congratulations to all the CAJ Awards recipients. Farewells: Lawyer and rights advocate MAUREEN MCTEER paid tribute to Ottawa philanthropist SHIRLEY GREENBERG , who died last week. They were law school classmates at the University of Ottawa. "Her contributions are legendary here in Ottawa, where her name adorns the Shirley E. Greenberg women's health centre, created thanks to her major donation," McTeer writes in the Ottawa Citizen. "Her humility rivalled her generosity."
| | On the Hill | | Keep up to House committee schedules here. Find Senate meeting schedules here. 10:30 a.m. The Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee meets to discuss the budget implementation bill. 11 a.m. The House international trade committee meets with department officials on main estimates and the Invest in Canada Hub. At noon, it will pop in camera to discuss two reports. 11 a.m. The House heritage committee meets for its first of two meetings today to continue its study of Bill C-11. 11 a.m. Transport Minister OMAR ALGHABRA visits the House transport committee to field questions about the government's spending plans. Intergovernmental Affairs Minister DOMINIC LEBLANC follows in the second half. 11 a.m. The House human resources committee will start in camera with a discussion of its report on Covid-19 and seniors. Minister of Families, Children and Social Development KARINA GOULD will be on the hot seat at noon. 11 a.m. The House agriculture and agri-food committee is studying the environmental contribution of agriculture with help from the Canola Council of Canada's Jim Everson and the Beef Cattle Research Council and Perennia Food and Agriculture Inc 11 a.m. The joint parliamentary committee for the scrutiny of regulations meets. 2 p.m. Public Safety Minister Mendicino will skip question period to instead appear at the Senate national security and defense committee meeting to answer questions about Bill S-7. 3:30 p.m. The House finance committee will hear from department officials as the MPs study of the budget implementation bill goes through clause-by-clause consideration. 3:30 p.m. Indian Resource Council's STEPHEN BUFFALO is on the witness list at the House natural resources committee as part of MPs' study of a fair and equitable energy transition. 3:30 p.m. MPs on the House national defense committee will hear from senior military officials as part of their study on rising domestic operational deployments and challenges. 3:30 p.m. The House heritage committee meets for the second time today to study Bill C-11 and will hear from witnesses representing groups including Digital First Canada, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists and Music Publishers Canada. 3:30 p.m. The House official languages committee will meet to discuss committee business and go in camera to talk about two upcoming draft reports on francophone immigration and government measures to protect French. Behind closed doors: 3:30 p.m. The House health committee meets in camera to discuss "planning of future business." 6:30 p.m. The special committee on Afghanistan will go in camera "in consideration of draft report."
| | TRIVIA | | Friday's answer: ANTHONY ROTA was recognizing the birth of the Dionne Quints as an event of national significance. On May 28, Cécile and Annette celebrated their 88th birthdays. Props to BEN ROTH, STEVE KAROL, LEIGH LAMPERT, TOM CORMIER, ROBERT MCDOUGALL, MANON DION, SHAE MCGLYNN and BRAM ABRAMSON. Monday's question: Name the first Jewish Canadian appointed to the Senate. Send your answers to ottawaplaybook@politico.com Have a petition you want signed? A cause you're promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness amongst this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Alejandra Waase to find out how: awaase@politico.com. Playbook wouldn't happen without Luiza Ch. Savage and editor Sue Allan.
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